Say It So It Sticks: How Leaders Should Own the Message — with Jeremy Maskel

Say It So It Sticks: Jeremy Maskel on Why Leaders Own the Message

In this post: Omaha Public Schools Chief Communications Officer Jeremy Maskel, APR, explains why 10 people leave the same meeting with 10 different stories, and why fixing that is the leader's job. He shares his bull's-eye method, the ladder of inference, and the difference between alignment and accountability.

Four people leave a meeting and agree the takeaway is that the sky is blue. A fifth says it is purple. A sixth says it is sprinkles.

"And that's what starts the post-meeting meetings," Jeremy Maskel said on Activating Greatness, the leadership podcast from Velocity Advisory Group. Next come the side conversations, the Slack channel leadership is not part of, and the anxiety that fills the gaps.

Maskel, APR, is Chief Communications Officer for Omaha Public Schools. Before that, he spent 10 years in broadcast news across Missouri, Iowa, and Nebraska. The newsroom taught him the lesson at the center of his leadership philosophy: When the message does not land, the messenger owns the problem.

The Reporter Cannot Blame the Viewer

A reporter, Maskel said, cannot come back to the newsroom and say they do not understand the story. They have to figure it out. Leaders, in his view, give themselves an exemption reporters never get.

"Too often I believe leaders say it is the employees' responsibility to figure it out," he said. "I've said it, I've put it out there, I've written the email, it's on employees to figure it out."

He rejects that framing. "When you take the systems approach, it's on us who have the privilege of serving in leadership to make sure our audience has what they need," he said.

Why 10 People Hear 10 Stories

The first mistake, Maskel said, is that "we overestimate others' attention span and ability to plug in." The people in the room have work, family, and a dozen other demands competing for their focus. His team's research suggests leaders often get eight to 30 seconds of attention before other intrusions creep in.

That forces a shift from "they need to pay attention" to designing an experience that gives people what they need to act. It starts with knowing the point. "The communication in and of itself is not the end," he said. Too many leaders treat a message as a checklist item that is done once it is sent.

The second mistake is jargon. Complexity and abstraction feel like "a safety blanket in the moment," Maskel said, but they create uncertainty. His test comes from education: Can people put the idea in their own words and explain it to someone else?

The third is skipping the feedback loop. Leaders need psychological safety for questions and explicit key takeaways, he said, "instead of just throwing all sorts of things out there and letting people pick their own takeaways." Ryan Payne made a related point about why silence is not agreement.

Slow the Climb Up the Ladder of Inference

When information is thin, people climb the ladder of inference, jumping from a data point to a conclusion. Low open rates become proof that the audience hates the product. A leadership push on AI becomes proof that jobs are at risk.

Maskel's habit is a simple question: "How do we know?" Separate what is observable and objective before layering in assumptions. To keep others from climbing their own ladders, leaders need to "efficiently and concisely explain how we got here."

How much to share is a real tension. Maskel starts with empathy: Decision makers have to put themselves in the shoes of the people executing the decision. Some will accept the change and act. Others show their care for the organization by needing to know more. Audience segmentation helps, too. A site leader needs more context than the people that leader serves, because the site leader has to make meaning of the decision for a specific location.

That takes precision. Know the outcome you want, then cut anything that does not serve it. Make the top line "snackable," he said, and point people to more, such as a follow-up Q&A. Precision never means spin. "We speak the truth," he said, citing the code of ethics behind public relations practitioners.

Start at the Center of the Bull's-Eye

For changes that affect many groups, Maskel works from the center of a bull's-eye outward. In his district, the board of education sits at the center, followed by senior district leadership, then leaders of the district's 100 schools, then staff, families, students, and the community.

"You never want somebody farther out on the bull's-eye to know something that the center of it does not."

Jeremy Maskel, APR, Chief Communications Officer, Omaha Public Schools

Picture a frontline employee who asks a site leader about a new decision and hears, "I found out the same time you did." That, Maskel said, "immediately erodes trust in what's to come." Equip each ring to answer the next. When the CEO's interview matches what site leaders say, the organization earns trust.

The ideal is not always possible. "At times, we've had to go in 10-, 15-, 20-minute increments," he said, because otherwise news reaches social media before it reaches the people who should explain it.

Aligned Is Not the Same as Accountable

Maskel grew up in Minnesota, and he thinks about rowing crews. Rowers can move in perfect sync. "If that crew team is rowing their boat without a destination, they're aligned," he said. "Nobody knows where they're going." Add a destination and a clock, and alignment becomes accountability. Dave Fechtman explored the same link in leading at the highest level.

He also borrows a colleague's phrase: holding people capable. Define success, give people the information, time, coaching, and resources they need, and keep checking in. Interim measures, such as clicks, requests for more information, and the questions that come back, tell leaders when to adjust the message.

His team practiced that. After internal email open rates and engagement slipped, the district asked staff why. Four or five actionable insights came back, the team acted on them, and open rates rose 10%. About 1,000 more people now engage with information they need.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why do employees leave the same meeting with different takeaways?

Jeremy Maskel, APR, Chief Communications Officer for Omaha Public Schools, says leaders overestimate how much attention people can give. Employees arrive with work and family demands competing for focus, and leaders often have eight to 30 seconds before other intrusions creep in. Jargon, unclear goals, and no check for understanding make it worse. When leaders throw out many ideas without stating the key takeaway, people pick their own, which sparks the "post-meeting meetings."

What is the ladder of inference in leadership communication?

The ladder of inference describes how people move from observing data to drawing conclusions and taking action. Jeremy Maskel says people skip steps when information is missing, jumping to assumptions about what a decision means for them. His remedy is to ask "How do we know?" and separate what is observable and objective from assumptions. Leaders keep others from jumping to conclusions by concisely explaining how a decision was reached.

How should leaders cascade communication during organizational change?

Jeremy Maskel recommends a bull's-eye approach: Start with the innermost leadership group and move outward ring by ring, so no one farther out learns news before the people closer to the center. Each ring should be equipped to answer the next ring's questions. When time is short, the cascade may compress into 10- to 20-minute increments, but the order still matters, because a manager who learns news at the same time as the team loses trust.

What is the difference between alignment and accountability?

Jeremy Maskel compares a team to a rowing crew. A crew rowing in sync without a destination is aligned, but no one knows where it is going. Accountability requires a destination and a timeline, so people know what success looks like and when. He pairs that with "holding people capable": Leaders define success, provide the information and resources people need, and check in along the way.

The Takeaway: Teamwork Is Beautiful

Early in his career, in a small Iowa newsroom, Maskel was a one-person band, shooting, writing, and editing his own stories. A mentor warned him that bigger operations would require him to work consciously and differently. The best advice he received was simple: Teamwork is beautiful.

Today, he said, nothing he does could be accomplished alone. That is the point of owning the message. Communication is not a broadcast from the top. It is how a leader equips every ring of the organization to move toward the same destination, and the work belongs to the leader first.

Listen to the Full Episode

Hear Jeremy Maskel's full conversation with host Alec McChesney on Activating Greatness. Find it on YouTube, or listen on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Follow Jeremy on LinkedIn.